Wheel Works ads take an unusual turn

Published 4:00 am, Monday, September 23, 1996

A 20-store Bay Area tire and wheel company is engaged in an apparently unprecedented form of advertising by taking sides in a thorny child-custody dispute.

The radio and newspaper ads by Wheel Works are so unusual that marketing experts don't know how to define the approach.

In the campaign, which began last week, Wheel Works takes the side of Stacy and Mark Alexander of Martinez, adoptive parents seeking to maintain custody of a 2-1/4-year-old girl, Haley.

The birth mother, identified as Elizabeth L. of Ridgecrest, Kern County, changed her mind about giving final consent to an adoption when the child was 6 months old and sought to reclaim the little girl.

The state Court of Appeal ruled early this month that the natural mother is entitled to custody. The case is expected to reach the California Supreme Court.

"Wheel Works has established a $10,000 matching grant to help protect the best interests of 2-1/4-year-old Haley Alexander, so she won't be taken from her home," reads the text inserted into the company's ad. "For every dollar you give, we'll match it. Please stop by any one of twenty locations with your contribution."

Clerks at the stores ask customers at the cash register whether they want to make a contribution, and provide facts about the case if asked.

"We felt this is really important and think the type of people who shop in my stores are concerned about family issues and I think these are issues that are important throughout the country, and if business and companies like mine don't take certain stands we're just not worth a lot," said Michael Hexner, president of Wheel Works.

He said the adoptive parents gave permission for the fund-raising pitch.

"Something gutsy here'

Joel Drucker, a veteran Bay Area marketing and advertising consultant, said that while there has long been "cause-related marketing," the recipients are

"sanitized" - universally supported efforts such as stopping hunger, breast cancer research, an Olympic team or a philanthropic campaign.

"This company is taking the lead and saying this is how they feel - but some people are going to say the biological mother is entitled to the child," said Drucker. "Since when is a corporation fit to be a kind of advocate? There's something gutsy here."

"This is commercial activism," said public relations and marketing specialist Cindy Wilson.

"I've never heard of anything like that. God bless him. I've always wanted to hear of it," said Wilson, of Information Network in Burlingame, an on-line game company owned by American Online.

Hexner said he expects to raise $10,000 and match it with $10,000 from Wheel Works, perhaps within three weeks, the length of a current advertising buy.

Wheel Works ads are heard on eight Bay Area radio stations and appear in major area newspapers. The time and space was already purchased, and the change in the ad copy is simply taking a few seconds or a small amount of space away from selling products.

Late last week Hexner said the response "has not been overwhelming," since many customers are unaware of the custody dispute.

"We're working on improving the education for our people," meaning employees who brief customers, he said.

"The compelling part of the story," Hexner said, "is that the child's best interests did not get, I think, consideration that they needed to get."

Did she meet the deadline?

The Court of Appeal in San Francisco noted that state law requires return of a child to the birth mother if she refuses to sign final consent for adoption in the first six months after birth.

The court ruled that the biological mother made her intention to reclaim the girl known on the last day of the six-month period. With the order, it reversed two rulings in Contra Costa County Superior Court - one from December 1994 and the second from May 1995 - that the birth mother missed the deadline and that it was in the best interests of the child to remain with the adoptive parents.

Hexner, who began his business in 1976, said he has been struck by other social or public issues but never had the wherewithal to become involved with them in advertising.

"We felt we were in a position that we were in enough of the newspapers and enough of the media that we felt there would be an impact," he said.

Drucker, the marketing consultant, said no Fortune 500 company would take sides in a contested issue.

"But I'm not quite clear on what it is he is accomplishing," Drucker said. "He is not necessarily boosting traffic. I can think of 500 other ways he can do that."

Wilson, however, said, "I think it's fabulous. You're saying this is what you believe in. I don't know anybody that gutsy."

Lesley Siegel, a Pleasant Hill lawyer who represents Elizabeth L., said the Court of Appeal has ordered parties in the case not to have any contact with the print or broadcast media.

She said the Alexanders are violating the order by permitting Wheel Works to use their name and the custody case in their ads.&lt;